Page 65 of Her Billionaire Boss
“And the chef.I’m fine with him,” she said quickly.
“I’m also thinking...”It pained me to even float the idea.“How would you feel about...selling theapartment.Moving somewhere that doesn’t freak you out so much.”
Her eyes lit up.“Can it be something on the ground?”
I hesitated.“That might be a tall order for New York.But we’ll look into it.”Maybe I could deal with a commute, if it made her happy.“And let’s look for something cheaper than where we’re currently at.”
“Having money trouble?”she asked with a sarcastic tilt of her head.
“No.Crisis of conscience.”I pushed myself up and, with nowhere else to go, paced in front of the gold-and-black marble fireplace.
It had the cleanest hearth I’d ever seen.There was no way this room had ever been used, at least not by Neil, El-Mudad, and Sophie.
Fuck, my kind of people were wasteful, weren’t we?
“If I sell it and buy something cheaper, we can give the money to...I don’t know.Something to do with homelessness?”
She watched me as I paced.I was oddly nervous.This was Charlotte I was talking to.She wasn’t going to make fun of me for wanting to spend money on something that did good.
“You could probably house the entire homeless population in the State of New York with your money,” she said quietly.
“I don’t think the apartment will sell for that much.The building has taken a lot of hits in the press and people are kind of turned off—”
“Not the money from selling the apartment.Your money.In the bank account you don’t even know the actual total for?”She said it in a gently shaming tone that I knew I deserved.
I had been living my entire life believing I was a “good billionaire.”But with all this need all around us...was it even possible to be a good personanda billionaire?
“I’m not saying that you have to,” she went on.“And I’m not saying that I think you’re a bad person.But you have so much money, and there’s so much suffering.Getting rid of the staff isn’t going to be enough to make you ‘normal.’”
“Caring about people and their problems will,” I said, because it was the truth.
“You can pay for your friends’ weddings.You can buy them houses.You can do whatever you want for the people you love, but you still have so much left over...there’s no reason to not do something good with it.”She was almost pleading with me, and the hope in her eyes twisted a knife in my heart.
Charlotte wasn’t with me for money or the lifestyle she could have with me.
She was with me in spite of all that.
“This is embarrassing,” I admitted.
“Why is it embarrassing?”she demanded.“Tell me what’s so embarrassing about a profound realization?Look, I got caught up in all of this, too.I love putting on expensive clothes and going to work at a glamorous job.”
I hadn’t ever thought of working in my office as glamorous.
“But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t looked at the price tag on a dress and thought to myself, wow, this is someone’s grocery bill for a year,” she continued.
“So, what you’re saying is, I should...give all my money away?”That made my throat constrict a little.
“You were ready to give it up for me,” she said softly.“What makes me so different than anyone else out there?”
So much, I wanted to say, but I knew that wasn’t the answer.The difference was that I was willing to give up my entire fortune to be with Charlotte because she made me happy.It was a romantic, poetic action, but selfish; we both knew that.
“And let’s be honest.”She fixed me with a withering expression.“There’s no way you’re going to be able to give away all of your money.In the time it would take to write the checks, you’d have already racked up a fortune in interest.”
“So...what do you suggest I do?What need do you think I can fulfill right now for someone, today?This is a genuine question here.I’m not trying to stump you to prove that I shouldn’t have to do anything philanthropic,” I clarified.
“I would never think that about you.”Her expression turned instantly sympathetic, her gorgeous eyes going all soft and round, her petal-pink lips parting in a moment of what I read as hurt.“It should be something that matters to you.You’ve been epileptic since you were a kid.I bet you spent a lot of time going to the doctor and hospitals, getting tests?What would have happened if your parents couldn’t have afforded that?”
I’d never considered that before.
